Self-Destruction
by gelybeans
Summary: Every shinobi lives with the scent of death on their hands.


**A/N: AU ish. It's been a while but I seriously hope I'm still up to par. I originally wanted to post up a somewhat lighter story but this refused to get out of my system.**

**All general disclaimers apply.**

Self-Destruction

_More…_

_It needs to be cleaner…_

She drew red.

When the droplets of blood stained the floor, it was then that she broke down crying.

She tried to be strong, as much as she wanted to just curl up and cry into her blankets during the entire mission, she could only put on a professional face and do what she was assigned to do.

_Kill a human being._

Needless to say that it had affected her. She hasn't been able to eat a single bite without vomiting, sleep, or even work at the hospital. She wanted just one of her teammates to come back and tell her it was going to be all right, she would even welcome Sasuke's insults and Kakashi's orange book.

She realized that they might have been the catalyst as to why she had accepted this mission in the first place, seeing as they always left her behind thinking that she was inferior in skill; thus, would be unable to protect herself. She wanted to prove them wrong.

And that she did.

What once had been an innocent girl was now the killer of a man who had not even expected death.

Although a lot of people would beg to differ and would say that man had it coming to him for all of the crimes that he had committed, Sakura did not think so.

Sakura stared at her hands.

These hands that once healed were now the hands of a murderer.

She couldn't even begin as to how efficient they had been as she gave the man a chakra-induced heart attack that left no evidence behind to trace it back to Konoha. It was horrible.

She could still see the blood staining her hands, the scent of it overwhelming her senses, she could see them dripping down to her hands.

"No, no, no." She whispered as she resumed her meticulous scrubbing, trying to get rid of the imaginary blood that stained hands.

She was wrong though.

What she could see, what she could smell, what she could feel…

_It was death._

**TWO WEEKS**

Haruno Sakura stood before Lady Tsunade awaiting orders for her upcoming mission. Although she found it odd that a client had specifically requested her for this particular mission, she was more concerned with the look that Tsunade had been giving her ever since she had entered the office. It was a mixture of concern and a hint of something that looked a little too close to sadness.

"Haruno Sakura," She heard her start, "Your have been commissioned to do a solo mission to be started as soon as possible."

She stood tall before the Hokage, paying attention to every word she said.

"There have been some problems in Iwa pertaining to a certain man, he's been constantly giving our merchants prices that are way too steep to join the trade there and if they don't pay he steals their merchandise with the help of some local thugs." She watched as the Hokage gave her a final look before saying, "Your mission is to kill him."

Sakura stared at her.

Tsunade was obviously waiting for some kind of reaction from the pink-haired jounin before proceeding but since she didn't seem to give any kind of reaction whatsoever so the Hokage decided to continue.

"Unfortunately, we have a treaty with Iwa as of the moment so we can't do anything to upfront about it. No evidence, no traces, make it look as if it was a natural death." Tsunade had said, eyeing her, "You were specifically chosen to do this because of your skills as a medic, so I have great faith that you can do this without fail."

Sakura sensed that this meeting was over so she bowed and proceeded to exit the room keeping a straight face the entire time.

"And Sakura," Tsunade called back with the voice she usually used when addressing the med-nin like she was her own child, "I know this is your first assassination. Don't-"

"Don't worry, Tsunade-shishou." Sakura said, with a smile, "I'll be fine."

In truth, she didn't know what to feel.

_She will be fine_.

She needed to remember that.

**PRESENT**

Sakura woke up in the bathroom after crying herself to sleep the previous night. She looked at her hands again, hoping that it had all been a stupid dream, that her hands were still clean of that vile substance.

Her hands were chafed and bleeding.

It was enough indication that it had all been reality.

_But all shinobi must have gone through this._

Those were her thoughts as she stood up on the white-tiled bathroom that had been stained red with her own blood.

Maybe she still needed to test herself, to get used to all the killing, all the blood, and maybe then eventually, she would no longer feel this pull in her heart that was telling her what she did was wrong.

She got into the shower adjacent to the toilet.

She now had a purpose.

After a quick bath, she would go back to Hokage tower.

She would request another assassination mission.

**ONE WEEK, 3 DAYS AGO**

Sakura had travelled nonstop towards Iwagakure and she reached her destination in record time.

She was steeling herself for what she was about to do.

She had trouble sleeping so she decided to make use of the time she was awake to cover some ground on the way to Iwa.

The man she was assigned to rid the world of was a local lord so when she had arrived she looked for the largest and gaudiest house she could find and asked around under the pretense of a maid looking for a job.

It had been easy enough.

People here had been unsuspecting, especially towards her, a petite civilian woman who looked like she couldn't even hurt a fly. She still had no entries in the bingo books so she was still relatively unknown to the world that was probably why they weren't cautious around her.

Upon entering the castle, she stealthily hid in the shadows with the help of a simple jutsu that she had seen Shikamaru use. She followed the guards around until they brought her to him.

The man, as opposed to the scrawny mean-looking guy she had seen in her mission specifics, was fat and proud. It might have been because he had accumulated enough riches that he had turned out this way.

She watched as he handled his business while smoking a cigar. After a few more minutes of waiting, she decided that it was time to move.

It was quick and painless, for her at least.

The man didn't expect what was coming. She merely appeared out of nowhere beside him, and with a tap of her fingers, the man was convulsing on the ground and in a few minutes, he was gone.

And so was she.

**PRESENT**

"I need another mission, Shishou." Sakura said, her eyes shining brightly as she stood before her teacher once again, "The same nature as the last one."

She Tsunade glance at her newly healed hands and was sure that the slug sannin would notice that they were still pink and tender.

"I don't think so, Sakura."

"I need it. Please." She couldn't conceal the desperation in her voice.

It was true that she needed that mission.

She needed it to see… to see if she could do it again. She might be risking her life but it didn't matter, she would rather die than have this uncertainty plaguing her for the rest of her life.

She saw Tsunade hesitate and she gave her best pleading look.

Needless to say that the Godaime could never deny her apprentice, "Okay. Actually, you're just in time, a request came in just a few hours ago."

And here she goes.

**ONE MONTH AFTER**

Sakura stared at the trail of bodies she had left in her wake. They were as many and as horrendous as the many corpses that haunted her reputation as a special hunter-nin of Konoha and they were all staring lifelessly at her.

She killed in a messy way because she loved the feeling of the bones being crushed as her fists connected with their bodies, the way their blood spewed with such intensity covering her entirety.

A few missions into this business of assassination, her hands had been completely covered in blood but now her entirety was dripping with it, figuratively and literally.

She took on assignment after assignment after assignment of assassination be it a team assassination or a solo one. It hardly mattered to her.

The feeling of killing was so exhilarating that she hardly felt the need to go back to her previous profession of healing her wide arsenal of medical ninjutsu being put to use on the battlefield.

Her team had been tasked to infiltrate the base of a rising rogue-nin organization. Konoha had wanted them to take in the notorious leader for questioning but they can't seem to find the man anywhere in their base.

And then she heard a slight whimper; it could've passed her detection had there been any other form of noise in the room.

She turned her head to the source of the sound.

She knocked on the wall behind the desk. It sounded hollow.

She smiled in glee.

She punched straight through the hole, grabbing the organization's leader by the throat and pulling him out and pinning him to the wall by the throat.

"We're not supposed to kill him." She heard one of her teammates say, making her turn her head towards him as the man struggled in her grip.

She didn't know her teammates in this stupid mission and she wasn't above saying that she had _accidentally _killed the man due to a short period of being unable to control her chakra just to show this guy who he was dealing with.

She glared, "Then what's the point of this mission?"

"The objective of our mission is simple. It is to bring him back alive," The rest of her teammates appeared, "And to dispose of you."

Sakura smiled, she knew this day would come.

From day one, Tsunade had given her those looks of incredulity and fear as she reported how easily she took care of her targets.

She crushed the man's throat with ease as the blood spewed itself on her person creating such a gruesome sight that the team that was sent to get rid of her cringed back in fear and distaste.

She was no longer human. She was a tool that had become too strong that's why Konoha wanted to get rid of her before she turned and become even more powerful.

She smiled this manic gleeful smile that held promises of very gruesome and painful deaths for those who challenged her.

_Well, they're too late._

**A/N: I'm still thinking of making this a multi-chaptered story, showing each character's reaction to Sakura's change. I find the topic of death along with Sakura very interesting.**

**Please review!**


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